What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

 

previous Christmas quilt hanging in our stairwell

Welcome to my creativity round up this week!  This week I took part in a free workshop on creativity with three lectures a day. I love Eric Maisel. 

I spent an amount of time being creative in the kitchen this week, (yep even dog cookies turn into art around here)

cranberry applesauce poodle cookies as a mandala

getting out the Christmas dishes, and kitchen towels, hanging quilts around the house from previous years, and using Christmas scrap fabric to create a few gifts, and soothe my harried soul...

I approached each little mug ...

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 Welcome to this week's creativity round-up... first a finish!!!

I went up to the happy place, my studio one (small but mighty) and looked into the Christmas "parts dept" to see 7 pieced hexie blocks. I kept looking but they called my name, know what I mean? 

they were similar sizes so I cut them all to be the same size, adding in some strips here or there. I made them a few years ago with scraps from a big Christmas quilt, and thought mug rugs. 

putting them together like this required some fancy y-seam machine work, and figuring ...

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This week I finished and hung on the mantle my acorns piece.... a testament to the lovely rich and varied color brown. 

I love color, so I admit to often bypassing neutrals but that's the scrap color of the month at RSC. I have an actual brown scrap bin, and used it this month

3/4" hexies

I have shared my process weekly with the acorns starting with the pattern, tiny scraps cut just so and sewn with care into 6" blocks! 

in making the block you do HST units by sewing, flipping open and trimming little triangle pieces ...

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welcome to this week's creativity round-up!  I signed up for three workshops of varying demands for this week, how did that happen... the reason I sign up for these free online workshops is you never know what you'll learn in them. For instance, the fabric hanging bucket above came from day one on Rebecca Page's Christmas crafts workshop. 

the back of the folded hanging container

I didn't end up making any others of the 41 projects on offer, but I did print out the patterns for several

that look like things I'd like. Back to ...

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do you recognize what this is???

You know how some weeks are really productive in a showy way and some weeks are back stage work?

I'd say this was a creative week of back stage work for me.... I worked a lot on a project I can't share til next week but have a couple things to show you... I shared 3 quilts on Thursday's post, you might like to go see them... HERE
 Let's start this show.....

I was thinking to try an embroidery technique of writing with stitches and put this together from the ...

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a finish! table runner close up  12" X 35"

Welcome to this week's creativity round-up... a painting collaboration, a quilting collaboration, and following a pattern (difficult for me!) 

Let's start with the painting....

my friend at https://canadianneedlenana.blogspot.com/ takes spectacular photos of nature, this week she shared a pic of a junco which inspired me to try to draw then paint it...

I was struck by the blue mixed with black and white, and the little sparkling eyes. 

What inspires you to make art from nature? There's always something... how to capture the light on ...

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 welcome to my creativity round up for the last week of October 2022.

Relax!?? when there is so much to do??

no not raking, 

ART-ing!!! 

The little index card with a message for me on it is about all I've painted except for fabric this week. I started with a word written with stabillo crayon, and wet brush dragged the paint into a shadow. Then leaves drawn with pigma marker, painted with watercolors, it was done! 

A workshop lesson this week was to try block printing on fabric

 

square stamp with spirals, lumiere paint

I used a foam brush ...

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Welcome to this week's creativity round up... a bit of paint, a bit of fabric, lots of color!!!

when I had to switch phones, I tested it by calling my friend Cindy. As we talked about art and life, I doodled the index card above. It didn't turn out like I hoped because I didn't segment the points first. But it was fun, and I got to play with bright watercolors!

I'm going to go back and forth from paintings to sewings.... it's all arting!

I sewed a lot this week, making this for RSC ...

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blue flowers 15" X 18.5"

for this week's sewing round up, I'm sharing a finish and some wine bottle blocks for RSC

The challenge of the month at RSC is to use our light/lime green scraps... this top was made a couple months ago, and I finished it this week. If you don't remember this one, I started with some blue scraps from a flowering snowball block series way back. They had curves I liked, so I sewed the halves together and improv curvy pieced them with light greens into a blue flower abstract.

pin ...

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For sewing this week, I made the hexi kaleidoscope blocks in light/lime greens the color of the month at the RSC. I went ahead and took a pic of the ones already done, and noticed by setting them this way you see kind of a light shadow around the outside... I'll have to take care when I have finished all the blocks. I think it might be a possible twin size with the blocks from the next two months. 

The newest blocks in light greens

I also spent some time with the scraps from making the Ricky Tims ...

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Welcome to this week's sewing round up... The pic is of a block by Lilyella done with EPP onto paper templates. I am into fall colors now that our trees have begun to wear them...

EPP is done in sections onto paper, and this time I glue basted them

 then stitched them together with a whip stitch
into a kind of kaleidoscope block

Which I'm trying to decide how to set

I enjoyed this music this morning as I typed this...autumn morning bossa nova 

when I finished the block, all the seams meeting in such a pinpoint ...

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For this week's sewing discussion I have three small finishes. The photo above shows the transition in color of the month at RSC from turquoise to orange.

The calendar says we are getting into Fall even if our temps remain nearly 100 F and the wildfire smoke is choking us when we go outside.  We are having record breaking heat when it traditionally was cooling off. 

My three finishes also show the transition from turquoise to orange and don't they compliment each other?  

I love Fall. I grew up in Florida where we had two seasons, hot and ...

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would you like some wine? This pattern is free from Hoffman Fabrics, and I used that turquoise in the upper right corner this month for the RSC color of the month. All from the scrap bin too.

Senor Flamingo Rose and Moonbeam Winery gewurztraminer

I have made them in all the RSC colors of the month since January and will eventually make them into a table runner

I looked at my Kaleidoscope this week and finally chose this fabric as my favorite border

However I only have a half yard and it's directional. So. Sew... it will be pieced ...

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Cabanas  45" X 19"

While sewing this week, in the extreme heat of summer (100F) I finished the cabana's quilt and made my sweaters in the RSC color of the month, dark blue! From coppertone to winter gear! 

Above is my finished summer quilt (pattern Moda row by row book) quilted and ready to hang. 

love the beach quilting effect!

 So I changed up the pattern... I made the tiny snail's trail blocks but chose to offset and double them up to resemble waves approaching a beach. I took out one cabana to make the quilt slightly less ...

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see the sun peeking out at top right?

This is Saturday's weekly sewing round-up for the week, welcome!

I have been obsessed with the tumbling blocks. I found this project after I'd done about half the blocks that you see here

it was an english paper piecing project I could do in front of the tv, in colors of the month at RSC. I added in some red blocks for this month and thought I have quite a few, what would they look like laid out? Since I couldn't place them on the vertical design wall (paper ...

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For this week's sewing round up, and two challenges, I'll start with my painted heart. Sometimes I wish I would not start my experimental sessions with scraps. It helps to reduce creative stress by thinking I won't be wasting any material but then if I like the outcome, I have odd edges to deal with. 

more later on that one.. this is the design wall I saw all week:

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I know it's paint party Friday but I've been sewing instead of painting again this week... except for the tiny wooden word here at the bottom.... I'll let my assistant show you how I painted it...

I collect fun embellishments, or did before the pandemic, and had these little wooden words on hand but they were too plain, so... gold metallic paint to the rescue!

another little embellishment, placed just so along the top. 

If you remember I made tiny leaf blocks with leftover half square triangles a few weeks ago, and turned them into two quilts ...

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My painting is leading to sewing...
It all started with the pink flower painting, printed three times on fabric.
Left: paper print
middle: color fabric print
Right: lightly shaded black and white with pencil color
In order to pencil color on, I printed a black and white washed out shadow version. Prismacolor pencils blend well on fabric, then heat set with iron.

I finished the black and white version earlier,

When the color of the month at RSC turned to pink, I took out my pink scrap bin, and noted some rounded pieces left from cutting some blocks last year ...

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I've spent time in the studio this week, painting and sewing both equally.

I enjoy following along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge each year because it
1. encourages us to use scraps and I love scraps
2. gives us a focus color to explore for a month
3. provides a ready made menu for the year, once you choose your patterns then it's just sew those blocks each month in the chosen color, then see what everyone else is making in same color

I admit, I'd have liked not to do turquoise, then light blue, then dark ...

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